Ten #2
My sister was nine when I packed a bag for Westfield’s spare room and told her it was temporary. Twelve when Dad died. Fourteen when our aunt, her guardian then, signed her into a school in Sweden, and I paid the invoice without ever asking to see the place. Nineteen now, and she still calls first.
I scroll her feed, swiping past a dozen squares of a life I’m not part of. I hate that I only know the shape of her through a screen.
I transferred money into her account last week. It was the one thing I know how to do without fucking up.
The silence after a win is a special kind of loud. I pour another whiskey and lie back, waiting for the emptiness to lift like it used to.
It doesn’t.
We fly out at ten. Optional skate in Seattle. Last game of the trip against the Snipers. I could sleep. I could try.
Instead, I stare at the ceiling and count the nights since the audio—since the truth crawled into my throat and made a home there.
Thirty-eight. And I’m still not done choking on it.
Gabriel · Monday, December 14th (Evening)
The two points we stole from Vegas feel like a lifetime ago, not two days. The momentary relief of that game-winner evaporated somewhere over Nevada, leaving the same damn hollowness that’s been my shadow for over a month.
Here in Seattle, the game is the same. I show up, I skate, and I drift a half-second behind everything that used to be muscle memory.
My third blown pass of the first period sails wide of Thompson’s tape, and I can feel Coach Wilson’s death stare burning a hole clean through the back of my jersey. The Seattle Snipers crowd jeers, their voices a distant roar compared to the hurricane in my head.
I slam into the boards awkwardly. Seattle’s centre skates past with the puck, barely acknowledging my pathetic attempt at a check. The arena pulses with energy, rival fans scenting blood in the water. My blood.
“Cas! Wake the fuck up!” Thompson shouts.
The buzzer signals the end of the first period, and we trudge down the tunnel. Seattle up 2-0, and I was on the ice for both. A fucking minus-two before the first intermission.
I strip off my gloves, throwing them into my stall. Forsberg catches my eye across the room. His expression is carefully neutral, but I know what he’s thinking. He stood on his head, making save after save, while I floated around like a fucking rookie.
“So much for a Vegas bounce,” Andrei Petrov mutters, peeling off his soaked jersey.
“Didn’t stick,” Andersson says without looking up, tape hissing.
The silence that follows is pointed. Without looking up, I can feel them exchanging glances.
Forsberg shifts in his stall. “Look, Cas—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I yank my helmet off, harder than necessary. “I know I’m playing like shit.”
“Then stop playing like shit,” O’Neill snaps from across the room. “We’re not your therapists.”
Thompson shoots him a warning look. “Easy, Ry.”
“No, he’s right.” I stand, water bottle tumbling to the floor. “This is on me. All of it.”
“Save the self-pity,” Holt says, his captain’s voice slicing through the tension. “Just fix it.”
A heavy hand lands on my shoulder before I can respond. Coach Wilson looms over me, his weathered face carved into deep lines. “Castellano. Hallway. Now.”
I follow him out, my skates clicking against the concrete. He waits until the door swings shut, then turns on me, eyes narrowed.
“This is the third time in a month I’ve had to pull you to the side, Castellano.” His voice is eerily quiet. “I’ve coached players through divorces, deaths and drug problems. Never seen someone this committed to sabotaging himself. What’s your endgame, kid?”
“No endgame, Coach.”
“Then explain why my highest-paid forward is skating like he forgot which end of the stick to hold.”
The honesty of his question catches me off guard.
“I’m working through some things,” I say lamely.
“Work faster. Because I don’t control your contract, but I do control your ice time—and right now, you’re earning less of it every night.” He steps closer. “Keep skating like this and you’ll be watching from the press box while Petrov takes your shifts.”
Back in the locker room, the guys have moved on to game prep. I slug water and try to reset. Six weeks since I sat in the dark and listened to my own voice come out of a laptop speaker. Six weeks of waiting for the version of me who finds the angle and wins the room.
He still hasn’t shown up. That version of me would already be halfway through fixing this. He’d know what to say to her, and he’d mean about half of it. Maybe that’s always been the problem.
The second period starts, and I push myself harder, but I’m pressing. Every decision comes a beat too late.
Justin Suzuki, Seattle’s captain, catches me with a clean hit that rattles my teeth. As we untangle, he grins.
“Heard you were supposed to be the missing piece,” he says, circling me like a shark. “Look more like a broken one to me.”
“Fuck off, Suzuki.”
“Ooh, original. No wonder they dumped you on the discount rack.” His eyes gleam with malice. “Tell me—was it the attitude or the disappearing act that made Montana give up on you?”
I see red. The crowd roars as we square off, but all I hear is that fucking audio clip on repeat. Hockey’s a man’s game. These puck sluts need to learn their place.
Suzuki drops his shoulder like he’s coming in.
I bite.
Gloves on. I swing. He’s there—already leaning back, hands down, chin tucked behind his cage, letting me do it. My fist lands on the hard shell of his helmet. The second finds the hardened visor. The third catches the ear guard and something in my hand gives.
For a split second, the face behind the visor belongs to someone else—the arrogant eighteen-year-old who thought he was untouchable.
Then a linesman takes me from behind, and the ice comes up, and Suzuki’s glove rides under my chin on the way down—casual, almost polite, catching my lip on the way through and clipping the point of my cheekbone hard enough that I don’t feel it until a beat later. Nobody sees it. That’s the point.
Referee Jenna Cross skates over, calling it as the linesman walks me to the box. “Whistler, number three, roughing. Two minutes.”
Suzuki hasn’t moved. Helmet straight. Not a mark on him.
“Thanks for the power play,” he shouts after me.
I sink onto the bench, knuckles throbbing. Across the ice, Coach Wilson’s face is going a deep, furious red.
Out of the box two minutes later, Thompson sends a perfect pass, setting me up for a one-timer I’ve buried a thousand times in practice.
I wind up, my stick cutting through air—and completely whiff.
The puck skitters to the corner as twenty thousand people laugh at me.
The sound drills into my skull, blending seamlessly with the recorded laughter of my eighteen-year-old teammates. Something snaps.
I turn and slam my stick across the top of the boards. Carbon fiber explodes. Shards spray back over our own bench, and Thompson throws an arm up to cover his face.
A sharp whistle shrills, followed by, “Unsportsmanlike conduct, Castellano. Two minutes.”
“For what? Missing the net?”
The referee’s expression doesn’t change, but something moves behind it. Recognition. She’s seen this before. “Equipment abuse. You want to make it a game misconduct?”
Thompson appears at my elbow. “Walk away, Cas. Just walk away.”
I shrug him off and head to the box.
Seattle scores thirty seconds into the power play. 3-0.
The door swings open, releasing me early. I do the skate of shame back to the bench, expecting to hop back into the rotation.
Coach Wilson doesn’t even look at me.
“Thompson, Andersson, Holt, O’Neill, Petrov. Go.”
I stand there, waiting for my name. It never comes.
“Sit down, Castellano.” His voice is ice. “You’re done.”
The final buzzer sounds: 5-1, Seattle. Our lone goal came from a Holt wrister in garbage time.
The locker room is a morgue. Forsberg strips off his gear in silence, a fresh red welt blooming along his ribs—because I kept handing them over at the blue line.
Holt stops in front of my stall, stands there in his towel, water dripping from his hair onto the concrete.
“I don’t know what’s eating you, but this team deserves better,” he says, quiet enough that it’s just between us. “And so do you.”
He walks away without waiting for a response.
I shower quickly, the hot water doing nothing to wash away the shame. In the mirror, a bruise along my cheekbone where Suzuki connected, my split lip a raw notice of how far I’ve fallen.
This is what Ivy sees when she looks at me.
A destructive force that leaves only wreckage.
The thought is a punch to the gut. Because as much as I hate it, I can’t deny the grudging admiration I feel for the woman she is now—the one who runs a bar, commands a room, and stares me down without flinching.
The one who survived me. And that, somehow, makes the guilt burn even hotter.
I grab my gear bag; its weight is heavier than it was this morning. We’ll be wheels-up for Vancouver in the morning, followed by two hours of engine noise up the Sea-to-Sky Highway in the team charter bus. Silence is easy on travel days. Accountability won’t be after.
Leave it in Seattle or don’t dress at home. The problem is, nothing I’m carrying belongs to Seattle.
It’s waiting where the peaks start. A town that remembers, a room I turned into hostile ice, and there’s nowhere left to skate but toward it.